America’s neutrality seemed harder and harder to maintain. In a letter to a female friend, Mary Hulbert, Wilson wrote, “Together England and Germany are likely to drive us crazy, because it looks oftentimes as if they were crazy themselves, the unnecessary provocations they invent.”
Still, Wilson recognized the fundamental difference that existed between how the two sides executed their campaigns against merchant traffic. The Royal Navy behaved in civil fashion and often paid for the contraband it seized; Germany, on the other hand, seemed increasingly willing to sink merchant ships without warning, even those bearing neutral markings. The torpedo attack on the Gulflight was a case in point. Within the State Department, Undersecretary Robert Lansing warned that in light of the Gulflight attack the United States was duty bound to adhere to Wilson’s February declaration vowing to hold Germany “to a strict accountability” for its actions. Wilson made no public comment, but he and Secretary of State Bryan, in background conversations with reporters, signaled that the administration would treat the incident in judicious fashion. “No formal diplomatic action will be taken by the United States Government … until all the facts have been ascertained and a determination reached,” the New York Times reported in a front-page story on Wednesday, May 5.
In fact, Wilson found the Gulflight incident disquieting. This was an American ship; the attack had killed three men. What’s more, it had occurred without warning. While the incident didn’t strike Wilson as having the magnitude to draw the nation into war, it did demand some kind of protest. That Wednesday, he cabled his friend Colonel House, still in London, to ask his advice on what kind of response to send to Germany.
House recommended “a sharp note” but added, “I am afraid a more serious breach may at any time occur, for they seem to have no regard for consequences.”
LUSITANIA
THE MANIFEST
ABOARD THE LUSITANIA, THE CUNARD DAILY BULLETIN kept passengers abreast of war news but, like its counterparts on land, reported only broad movements of forces, as if war were a game played with tiles and dice, not flesh-and-blood men. These reports did not begin to capture the reality of the fighting then unfolding on the ground, particularly in the Dardanelles, where the Allied naval and ground offensive had stalled and British and French forces had dug trenches that mimicked those on the western front.
The most terrifying part of battle was the exit from a trench—standing up and climbing out, knowing that the opposing force would at that moment unleash a fusillade that would continue until the offensive concluded, either with victory, meaning a few yards gained, or defeat, a few yards lost, but invariably with half one’s battalion dead, wounded, or missing. “I shall never forget the moment when we had to leave the shelter of the trenches,” wrote British private Ridley Sheldon, of combat at Helles, at the southwest tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula. “It is indeed terrible, the first step you take—right into the face of the most deadly fire, and to realize that any moment you may be shot down; but if you are not hit, then you seem to gather courage. And when you see on either side of you men like yourself, it inspires you with a determination to press forward. Away we went over the parapet with fixed bayonets—one line of us like the wind. But it was absolute murder, for men fell like corn before the sickle.”
The wounded lay in the open or in shell holes awaiting stretcher bearers who might not come for hours, or even days. Injuries ranged from minor penetrations by shrapnel to grotesque disfigurements. “I got back into the trench, and saw what I had not seen before, for the smoke had cleared now,” wrote Capt. Albert Mure, also on Helles. A shell had just landed in his trench, in the spot where moments earlier he had been writing messages to be delivered by two orderlies. One orderly survived, the other did not. “His body and his head lay 4 or 5 feet apart. Two of my signalers were killed also, and mutilated so horribly that to describe their condition would be inexcusable.”